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Salilah's blog

I was trying to make Daisy's Wholemeal Lemon Sourdough (original successful recipe here)

Not sure what particularly went wrong - my assumption is that a) I left the preferment too longb) I used slightly unripe starterc) I left the mixed dough too long for bulk fermentd) the S&F method didn't work so well for wholewheat as for whitee) I didn't knead enoughf) the gods were not smiling :-)

I shaped the dough into small loaves - 20mins into proofing and oops - disintegrating dough!

There was no surface tension when shaping...

I decided to pop them in the oven anyway - 30mins at 220C

They smelled great - and tasted OK - but pretty awful rise (i.e. almost none) - it's "back to the bricks", and just when I thought I was doing well...

I was refreshing my rye starter from the fridge, so kept 75g and refreshed (back in the fridge after a while) and decided to boost what was left with some white flour and water to build into a baking levain. I knew I could only do one small loaf, but the starter seemed so lively, I thought "Why not use all of this?"

Mixed up fine without the salt - autolyse for around 45m then S&F in the bowl. Getting late so it went into the fridge for around 14 hours

Out again this morning, S&F, added salt, S&F. It appeared to be getting more rather than less sticky with the S&F in the bowl, and I had a reasonably good windowpane. Turned out onto a floured board and shaped roughly then one formal S&F and covered for 30m. Repeated again and waited 30m. Rough shape and waited 30m. Final shape - it seemed fine, quite firm, getting a reasonable shape (though I am not very good yet).

Floured very lightly, then covered with oiled clingfilm to proof. After about an hour and a half, I checked and saw - the cowpat!

The skin was tearing all across the loaf - in some places just gently folding away from the inside! Finger-poking felt normal (some spring back) but I thought I ought to bake ASAP!

Oven 230, didn't bother to slash as it was splitting anyway - just a little bit of steam at 5m and 10m

It came out looking almost reasonable (if a bit still cow-patty):

It tastes quite nice! Quite sour - which I guess comes from teh long retarding and the really high %age of sourdough starter.

I'm guessing the tearing of the skin comes from being well over-proofed? It wasn't particularly long, but I assume the low amount of flour compared to the amount of starter meant the yeast ran out of food too early? Any other thoughts?

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